This panel seeks to explore how travel narratives formulate, codify and transmogrify Alterity through visual and written discourses in the eighteenth century. Though the European Grand Tour was the most familiar itinerary for the eighteenth-century traveler, many ventured farther than ever before. Transatlantic, the Middle East and the Far East were no longer itineraries that were just the purview of official embassies but increasingly the destinations of the ordinary traveler. Travelogues of increasingly exotic destinations were popular with the reading public. The eighteenth-century travelogue is a significant and unique discursive juncture to examine the merging of the impulse to familiarize Alterity and the representation of dispossession and displacement of the self that accompany such cross cultural encounters. Thus, how do eighteenth-century travel narratives seek to familiarize "exotic" cultures but at the same time render home "strange"? Also, for example, how do spatial borders and identity borders coincide or deconstruct in such narratives? Papers that explore the space of Alterity in travel narratives from different disciplines, national and cultural perspectives are invited. Please send abstracts by September 15, 2010 preferably via email to M.Narain@tcu.edu. Mail address: Dept. of English, Texas Christian University, TCU Box 297270, Fort Worth TX 76129; Tel: (817) 257-7248; Fax: (817) 257- 6238